


Anti-Cathartic

by Devils_Official



Series: TMGOOD Extras [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Horror, I wrote this out of spite and anger, Lotor deserved better, M/M, Nightmares, Season 8 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 14:50:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17205425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devils_Official/pseuds/Devils_Official
Summary: Just a little thing I wrote immediately after finishing S8 that technically takes place in the TMGOOD ‘verse, but didn’t really fit into the main story line.





	Anti-Cathartic

_ There was only light and pain and her voice, commanding, demanding. Meaningless noise, and yet he could not help but obey. He was not his own anymore. He was nothing, no one. Fragments of concentrated power. _

_ There had never been anything but this. The power -life, death, pain -that made him, that destroyed him. _

_ Nothing but a conduit for too much power. It was tearing him  _ -them _ -apart, breaking down the barriers between man and machine.  _

_ Rot ate at them, like acid devouring flesh, repugnant and horrifying, melting and merging and leaving nothing but a puppet, a tool- _

_ What she always wanted. Just a mindless thing for her to use to get her way.  _

_ “We will be together, my son,” she said, firmly, threateningly. “I will find a way.” _

_ Flesh sloughed away, dripping like molten wax, magma, dissolving. He was alive and not alive all at once, aware and conscious of this destruction worse than death.  _

_ He tried to scream, to rage, to do anything to escape this, but there was no escape from her; there never had been. He had been a fool to fight for so long, only to end up like this. _

_ “Foolish child,” she crooned. “But soon you will love me like you were meant to.” _

 

“No!” Lotor bolted upright, startled out of his nightmare-memory, revolted and horrified and terrified.

Revulsion crept up his throat, bile rising, and he ran to the bathroom, barely falling to his knees before retching into the toilet.

It horrified him just as much as every other time he thought about it, but he could not control his dreams as well as his waking thoughts, and it kept creeping back into his sleeping mind, the vision of his own corpse, rotting and corrupted and entirely under her power. 

All his agency, stripped away, his life lived for no purpose, everything he’d fought for destroyed, his body desecrated and demeaned…

Not to mention the memory of how it felt for his body to decay like that. 

He retched again.

Sendak knelt down behind him and pulled his hair out of the way. 

When Lotor finally sat back, he was still shaking. Sendak wordlessly rubbed his back. 

Even his worst nightmares, before the Rift, had never been this bad. It had been unimaginable, despite everything else he’d gone through.

But, somewhere, in another reality… That was how it had ended. Just another of Haggar’s puppets. Used and discarded at her whim. Broken and worthless and alone. 

Sendak handed him a glass of water, and he rinsed his mouth out before draining the rest of the glass.

“Are you alright?” Sendak asked finally, deliberately gathering Lotor up in his arms, no sudden movements that Lotor couldn’t predict.

Before the Rift, when the dreams were different, that would have been all Lotor needed. Now…

“I saw things in the Rift,” Lotor said hoarsely. “Other realities. I… lived them. Some of them were…”

“That’s what happened to you in the Rift?” Sendak asked. “Reliving your own life over and over again, in different realities?”

“More or less. Some realities were nice, but most were...not. I had a dream about one of the worst.” 

He explained, haltingly, to Sendak, about the dream, about his death, so visceral, so  _ real _ that he had to stop and retch again.

“It was three years for me,” Sendak said finally, filled with a quiet kind of fury. “How long was it for you?”

“I don’t know. Lifetimes.” 

“Lifetimes of that? I- Gods, Lotor, that’s...repulsive. It wasn’t enough that you had to live through the horrors of this reality, but now you have the memories of all the others, too? That’s... _ cruel _ . Sadistic.” 

“That’s rich, coming from you,” Lotor said, attempting to lighten the mood, change the subject,  _ anything _ .

“I am only cruel on the battlefield. This is different, Lotor. I wouldn’t wish that on  _ anyone _ , not my worst enemy, much less you. You’ve already suffered far more than you should have.”

“I survived,” Lotor said. “But it- It could have been me. It  _ was _ me. Just...in a different reality. What choices led him -me-  _ -us- _ down that path, and what’s stopping me from going down that same path?” 

“I will never allow that to happen,” Sendak said. “No matter what.” He kissed the top of Lotor’s head. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Lotor whispered. “More than anything.” 

“Then trust me about this.” 

Lotor nodded, pressing himself even closer to Sendak’s chest, allowing himself to be surrounded by him. Feeling whole and hale, not desiccated, not corrupted. Not alone. 


End file.
